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mstances to yield to him. The consequence has been, that while the American has stamped his character upon the whole country, there are not ten places in the valley of the Mississippi, where you would infer, from anything you see, that a Frenchman had ever placed his foot upon the soil. The few localities in which the French character yet lingers, are fast losing the distinction; and a score or two of years will witness a total disappearance of the gentle people and their primitive abodes. Even now--excepting in a few parishes in Louisiana--the relics of the race bear a faded, antiquated look: as if they belonged to a past century, as, indeed, they do, and only lingered now, to witness, for a brief space, the glaring innovations of the nineteenth, and then, lamenting the follies of modern civilization, to take their departure for ever! Let them depart in peace! For they were a gentle and pacific race, and in their day did many kindly things! "The goodness of the heart is shown in deeds Of peacefulness and kindness." Their best monument is an affectionate recollection of their simplicity: their highest wish ----"To sleep in humble life, Beneath the storm ambition blows." FOOTNOTES: [70] _History of the United States_, vol. iii., p. 336. Enacted in Massachusetts. [71] A detailed and somewhat tedious account of these savage inroads, may be found in Warburton's _Conquest of Canada_, published by Harpers. New-York. 1850. [72] This is the estimate of Bancroft--and, I think, at least, thirty thousand too liberal. If the number were doubled, however, it would not weaken the position in the text. [73] On the subject of naming towns, much might have been said in the preceding article in favor of French taste, and especially that just and unpretending taste, which led them almost alway to retain the Indian names. While the American has pretentiously imported from the Old World such names as Venice, Carthage, Rome, Athens, and even London and Paris, or has transferred from the eastern states, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and New York, the Frenchman, with a better judgment, has retained such Indian names as Chicago, Peoria, Kaskaskia, Cahokia, Illinois, Wisconsin, Missouri, Wabash, and Mississippi. [74] This word is a pregnant memento of the manner in which the vain words of flippant orators fall, innocuous, to the ground, when they attempt to stigmatize, with contemptuous terms, t
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